The Caligula Effect: Overdose (2023) [PS5] review

I’m going to show them a world without you. A world without rules and controls, without borders or boundaries. A world where anything is possible. Where we go from there is a choice I leave to you.

-Neo, The Matrix

Remember when The Matrix was the hotness of the day? You really couldn’t get away from it, and unlike the superhero spam in today’s theaters, you probably didn’t want to. It was a cross-cultural phenomenon that showed up all over the place, up to and including an ill-fated MMORPG. We’d later see similar concepts show up in the isekai genre of anime and games, including the very obvious homage The Caligula Effect: Overdose.

Ever want to just get away from it all? Well, the virtual world of Mobius allows you to do just that. Plug in and you can live your perfect life, existing as whoever you want to be. It’s paradise in digital form, so good that you’ll never want to leave…except, well, what if you do? That’s the question posed by the Go-Home Club, a group of Mobius high school students who decide that they’d rather face reality on its own terms.

The Go-Home Club’s plans are unacceptable to the Ostinato Musicians, a group of music-making bigwigs determined to stop them. More importantly, the musical AI µ runs Mobius and isn’t having any of this “let’s escape from the virtual world” nonsense. The members of the Go-Home Club will need to find a way out one way or the other, and they’re going to have to go through µ, the Musicians, and plenty of brainwashed Mobius residents to do it. We’re playing the Overdose version here which includes a fair amount of expanded content, including allowing the player to check out things from the Musicians’ side as well. It’s a nice bonus.

As one might imagine, plots like this featuring characters who may or may not be who they seem due to the nature of a virtual world can lead to interesting musings on the nature of identity. That’s not what I typically sign up for with games, though, so I’ll let the intelligentsia of Twitter handle those discussions. Suffice it to say that critics from both sides of the aisle will likely have a lot to say about how Caligula handles certain topics, and good luck to them in that pursuit. I’ll be over here having a snack since a video game has never made me feel anything other than hungry.

Nah, I’m mostly here for the music and the combat. Battles in The Caligula Effect are unique, to say the least. The system here has a little in common with the classic Grandia series, where characters and enemies follow a timeline; player characters are given commands at the start of the timeline, prepare their attacks over the coming moments, and finally make their moves. The idea is that it’s possible to watch the timeline to predict when enemies will attack and queue up a counter or evasion to minimize the damage that the party takes.

The quirk here is the ability to manually delay party members’ actions in order to set up combo attacks and simultaneously view a preview of how your actions will play out. Just as one example, it’s possible to knock an enemy into the air with one party member, having another juggle them with gunfire a la Devil May Cry and then smack it down with a third, all the while timing these moves so that they also evade incoming enemy fire. There’s a certain satisfaction in arranging things just so, particularly because proper strategy can defeat baddies far above your level.

It’s also pretty satisfying to run into a group of enemies and hear the background track kick up into a more intense version with vocals. The Caligula Effect’s presentation really leans into the game’s musical themes and the artificial nature of Mobius. Each dungeon has a different backing song that changes while you’re in and out of combat, while graphically there’s a big focus on the sort of Matrix-style cyberpunk glitchiness you’d probably expect. It looks and sounds fantastic…well, mostly.

See, between plot, presentation, and gameplay you’ve got an experience that’s interesting at the very least. This is all well and good, but there’s a key point that needs to be made: this game’s edging up on being a decade old, having initially seen release in 2016 on the PlayStation Vita. Despite this, the PlayStation 5 version is a performance nightmare. There are framerate hitches, stutters during combat, and lighting issues that no tester would have missed…there are Early Access games on Steam that feel more polished, and those don’t have the benefit of having been fully released for seven years. It boggles the mind.

That said, it’s easy to recommend The Caligula Effect: Overdose and easier to warn potential players to stay away from the PlayStation 5 version. There’s a PC port of this one released in 2019 that’s far superior technically and readily available on sale for a song throughout most of the year. Heck, even the PlayStation 4 version is cheaper and doesn’t have the bizarre lighting issues seen on the PS5. This is a solid game that’s let down by its latest port. Do yourself a favor and take a look at one of the previous versions if you’re going to play it.

Thank you to NIS America for sending us a copy of The Caligula Effect: Overdose for this review.

BROKEN PIXEL

Not Recommended

Cory G. believes the pen is mightier than the sword…well, depending on how sharp the pen and sword are. A child of the ’90s and a prolific writer, he strews his work about like Legos made of words, just waiting for your brain to step on them. He enjoys a devilish challenge, so when it comes to talking about some of the more difficult games out there, you might just run into the Infernal Accountant Mage. Some advice: hold on to your soul around this guy, and don’t sign anything. Read more at popzara.com.